“You ever in her apartment?”
“Once. I didn’t make out. That was the last date I had with her.”
“What’d she do for a living?”
“She was a model. Fashion work, I think.”
“What’s your line of work, Mr. Henderson?”
“I’m a draftsman. With Sheaffer and Jacoby.”
“And you never met anyone else who knew Barbara Lawson?”
“That’s right.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I told you.”
“You told me the last time you had a date with her. You mean you haven’t seen her since? Even on the street? In the hallway here?”
“Oh.” He seemed to be having a hard time keeping from getting teed off again. “I saw her yesterday afternoon. She was getting out of a cab in front of the house here when I came home. I walked on down to the corner and back, to make sure she’d have time to go up before I got there.”
“Why?”
“Personal matter.”
“I appreciate that. Still...”
He shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t make any difference, at that. It just happens I didn’t want to meet her in the lobby or the elevator. We didn’t hit it off too well on that last date we had. Both of us got around to saying some pretty nasty things before it was over. I... well, I just simply didn’t feel much like coming face to face with her again, that’s all.”
I heard the elevator doors slide open, and then several pairs of footsteps came along the corridor. I listened to them going up the iron stairs to the roof, and then I rose and moved toward the door.
“Just one thing more, Mr. Henderson,” I said. “Do you make a habit of going up on the roof every morning?”
“I was waiting for that,” he said. “You just had to ask that one, didn’t you?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. How about it?”
“You’re in for a disappointment. The answer’s yes. I go up there every morning, except when the weather’s too bad.”
“Any particular reason?”
“A very particular one, Manning.
I go up there because I like to go there. I like the view. I like to look down toward the Hudson. I don’t feel obliged to describe the feeling it gives me, but it’s a good one.” He got up and crossed to the door and opened it for me. “You’ll have to try it yourself sometime, Manning, you really will.”
“Maybe I’ll do that,” I said, as I stepped into the corridor. “Well, thinks very much, Mr. Henderson. I may have to talk to you again later on. I’m sorry about the inconvenience, but—”
“I’m already dreading it,” he said, and closed the door with just a little more force than most people find necessary to accomplish the same operation.
I thought about him as I made my way to the roof. One of the fundamentals of police investigation — in a homicide where the killer is unknown — is that you must look first to the husband or wife, and then to the person who found the body. They are automatic suspects, always, and as often as not your investigation need go no further. The reason for suspecting the husband or wife is obvious enough, and while I don’t pretend to know the mental quirks behind a murderer’s wish to have policemen admire his handiwork, a surprising number of them do report their own homicides. This is equally true of arsonists. And the fact that detectives are sent to the funerals of persons who have been murdered by unapprehended killers, is well known.
Many a murderer has been caught that way, and because of this fact, some funerals have been attended by more detectives than mourners.
3
I stepped out on the roof and walked over to the girl’s body. The footsteps I’d heard in the corridor had belonged to the policewoman, the assistant M.E., and the ambulance attendants. The surrounding roofs were more crowded than ever and there were at least two people watching from every window in sight.
“Well, if it isn’t my partner,” Walt Logan said with mock sternness. “Glad to see you back. How was your trip? And why didn’t you drop us a post card now and then?”
I nodded to the policewoman and the assistant M.E. “Hello, Rosie. How are you, Ted?”
“This is a fine way to start the day,” Rosie said. “Let’s get her inside somewhere.” She motioned to the gallery. “Those yahoos make me sick.”
“It would be better,” Ted said. “Is it all right to move the body, Steve?”
“Can’t, right now,” I said. “The lab boys and the photographer haven’t been here yet.”
“They’re on their way up,” Rosie said. “We saw them unloading their gear off the truck as we came in.” She looked up at the other roofs again. “Listen. There’s enough of us here so that we can stand real close around her. Sort of form a screen. You know?”
“We might as well, I guess,” I said. “It’ll take the techs a while.”
I called the patrolmen and the ambulance attendants in close, and we made a tight circle around the girl’s body. The policewoman made her search quickly and efficiently, and then the assistant M.E. took over. Neither of them disturbed the position of the body by even the fraction of an inch.
“Well, that just about does it,” the assistant M.E. said. “There’s nothing more I can do till I get her to Bellevue.”
I looked at the policewoman. “How about it, Rosie?”
“A waste of time, Steve. No hidden money or narcotics. No weapons — not even a razor blade in her hair. No anything. All I can tell you is that those clothes are good. The best. There aren’t any National Recovery Board tags in the seams — not that it matters. She got the dress at Delano’s, on Fifth Avenue. The shoes are Helen Munson’s, and that’s just about the most expensive brand there is, outside of custom stuff.” She took a search form from her shoulder bag and began filling it out. “And if you’re interested — that auburn hair’s natural. The girl was born with it.”
“I wonder what happened to the D.A. and his guys,” Walt said. “Maybe they’re as shorthanded as we are.”
“They stay pretty busy in this town,” I said. I turned to the assistant M.E. “How’s it look, Ted?”
He snapped his bag shut and shook his head. “I’m a little concerned about the lack of blood, Steve. We can’t expect much, if she died almost instantly. But still there seems to be just too darned little of it. Those are knife wounds, of course, but there’s always the possibility she died some other way before she was knifed. I remember a case — back in ’41, I think it was — where a man shot another. Got him right through the heart, but it was dark and he couldn’t be sure. He tried to shoot the man again, but the gun jammed. So he shucked out a knife and stabbed him a dozen or so times in the chest. We thought we had a clear case of death by stab wounds, until we posted the body. Then we found that one of the knife thrusts had gone into his chest at exactly the spot where the bullet struck him. The slug was flattened out against a bone, and it had a slice in it where the knife had struck it as it traveled exactly the same path.”
I nodded. The doc was right not to take anything for granted, of course. Sometimes the most obvious things are obvious only because someone went to a great deal of trouble to make them look that way.
“How long would you say she’s been dead?” I asked.
“Well, the postmortem lividity is as pronounced as it’s likely to be, but the rigor mortis has worked down only to her knees. I may be able to tell the time exactly, once I get her on the table, but right now I’d say she’s been dead about eight hours. That’s rough, mind you. You’ll have to operate on the assumption that it could be as much as an hour either way.”